there is hope but not for us

:: ✠ pitches, pitches and a bunch of broken hearts, my my!

Perhaps understandably, Hans isn't...a character that most people would use for their stories or pitches. I'd go so far as to say that it'd require them to have a more than cursory knowledge of DC Comics history or at the very least, an interest in seeing what other characters DC has in order to use them. Maybe that's...a little too "high standard" of me, given that (ha ha) I've never pitched to DC before unless someone gives me a million bucks to take a trip to those pitch meetings, but at least if it were me, I'd do that.

That said, pitching a story is never easy -- I think I could have been a billionaire with the amount of times I've been rejected from--any comics! Lots of factors collude for the pitch to not be accepted, right down to editors being absolutely dog-mad cruel, and it's something that we should have in mind when reading these pitches.

Batman: Aces High, Jokers Wild -- Chris Weston

Every time I remember about this one, I just want to cry, haha. (Okay not really, but you'll see why I'm so [hand gestures])

Weston has graciously talked about this pitch in length, so I'll just link you to his post.

Now you might be confused by the title --"this is a Batman story?" Besides the fact that someone really ought to do a write-up on why Batman and Enemy Ace are constantly paired together, Weston meant for this to be part of the Elseworlds imprint that DC had for many, many years. Essentially, it was all AUs, all the time, baby.

A Batman/Enemy Ace team up in WWI, in an Elseworlds comic? Inject that into my veins lol

When Weston posted about this over on twitter again a few years later, he got an enthusiastic, resounding positive response to his pitch. And I can't blame the replies -- even though Batman's not a fave, I'd read it too.

Weston surmises that it may have been due to saturation of the Elseworlds line. Entirely possible.

That said, I also share Weston's "in hindsight" view here. I liked the Wonder Woman movie, but that scene definitely is something to think about a lot.

Justice League of Tomorrow -- Rick Remender and Rafael Albuquerque

This one is SUCH an oddity to me -- Hans hasn't been a stranger with teaming up with the JLA before, but...I don't know, I have so many QUESTIONS. It's such a random line-up--'90s Superman post-death, Golden Age Sandman, Hawkgirl, POISON IVY?! Mind you, if you can make a line-up work, you can absolutely make it work and make people believe in it. But I also have never read any of Remender's work, to my recollection, so I can't really say one way or the other. But I still stand by the "well...convince me it works!"

I do love Albuquerque's art though and his Hans is quite nice.

Part of my fascination with this, a la history research mystery uh thing, is partly because any info about it is limited to Remender himself having shown the art and mentioned it back in 2020. Unfortunately he deleted his tweets, so I can only link to the Bleeding Cool article.

...Or so you THINK! Thankfully, Wayback Machine is here to the rescue! Here's the archived tweet along with a very good follow-up

Maybe someday I'll get the courage to email Remender and ask him if he's willing to say more (within legal limits) to some rando Hans fan. Because god...this is such a big what-if.